When comparing Airmail vs Gmail, the Slant community recommends Gmail for most people. In the question“What are the best Gmail clients for iOS?”Gmail is ranked 1st while Airmail is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Gmail is:

Since both the Gmail Android app and Gmail itself is made by Google, the app supports all features Gmail offers (like labeling/starring) and gets new features implemented early - usually as soon as they are announced.

Pros

Pro

Clean interface

Airmail has a very clean and modern interface. On the left side of the screen are the folders (inbox, starred, draft, sent, snooze, trash) and on the right side the email threads for the folder currently being viewed.

Pro

Multiple ways of sorting emails

There are multiple ways to sort emails with Airmail. You can sort by unread, starred, attachments, conversations, dates, and many more criteria. You can even combine different criteria together.

Using these filters makes it extremely easy to quickly find any email you are looking for.

Pro

Always keep the inbox clean

Airmail allows users to snooze an email until a defined moment (a few hours later, tomorrow, next weekend, next week, etc.), allowing you to process every email immediately and to always keep the inbox clean.

Pro

Extremely customizable

Instead of forcing the user to work with their email the way Airmail developers would want, it allows the user to customize and make the email client work the way they want because of the sheer flexibility of the application.

There's a lot of settings available in Airmail with which you can customize almost every aspect and functionality of the app. In fact, it's very easy to get lost in them and spend a lot of time tweaking and customizing everything to your liking.

Pro

Supports Gmail shortcuts

Pro

Automatically syncs settings between devices

If you are using Airmail in different devices (either MacOS or iOS), you can automatically sync settings through iCloud.

Pro

Consistent interface between devices

Airmail is available for both iOS and Mac, for people who use Apple's mobile devices. And the interface between both platforms is quite consistent, making it easy to seamlessly jump between one and another.

Pro

Fast and easy setup process

Even though there's a huge amount of settings available, it's quite easy to get used to each of them and the setup process is very fast and easy.

Pro

Supports trackpad gestures

Airmail is able to use trackpad gestures for achieving and deleting mail items.

Integrates with multiple third-party services

Pro

Support for VIP folders

VIP folders are for particular senders which you always want to read even when you are ignoring email. The way it works is that you add different senders as VIPs and emails from those senders will always be surfaced on top of everything else.

Pro

Best support for Gmail features

Since both the Gmail Android app and Gmail itself is made by Google, the app supports all features Gmail offers (like labeling/starring) and gets new features implemented early - usually as soon as they are announced.

Pro

Incredibly fast, advanced & predictive search

Gmail brings much of the functionality and power of Google's search engine to the app's search. You can use operators such as label:, is:, OR, has: among others, define date ranges, limit search to specific groups and so on. And, you can do it all amazingly fast. The search will also try to predict what you're trying to search for before you've even finished your query and offer up those results.

Pro

Comes bundled with Android for free

Not only is the application free, it comes bundled with the Android OS by default so you don't even have to bother downloading it.

Pro

Google Drive integration

The app allows inserting files from Drive straight to email or uploading attachments to Drive before sending them out. It will also notify if the person you're sending the file can open the file or if you should change the sharing settings for that file beforehand. Finally, you can choose which one of your Google accounts you want visible in the app.

Pro

Safely automatically displays images

The app does not require a confirmation to show images as Google now hosts the images on their own servers making it safe. You can still disable the automatic displaying of images in the settings if you wish.

Pro

Google Calendar integration

Pro

Tabs to automatically organize your e-mail

Each of the categories can be disabled and you can move your mail around from category to category or set your own rules which sender should be put in which category.

Pro

Threaded conversations

Ad

Cons

Con

Unreliable

There are many issues/bugs with different accounts, including Gmail and iCloud.

Con

Inability to turn off auto-creation of labels

Version 3 does not allow it while version 2 did.

Con

Serious sync problems

On some IMAP accounts, there are a number of serious sync problems, which otherwise work fine with Apple Mail.

Con

Copying/moving mails unreliable

Doesn't work most of the time even though the operation is reported as successful. Even has lost emails when moving. Support was not too much use either.

Con

Not free

Paid version only.

Con

UI is a little busy

Con

Rather expensive

Con

Has the "slow typing" bug

When composing an email, Airmail can respond very slowly to keystrokes. Customer service refuses to acknowledge this problem, responding that it's "not real" - which is a very odd response, to simply refuse to acknowledge the customer's experience.

Con

Sorting mail by Unread is unintuitive

Nearly every other mail app has a clear way to sort mail by Unread. In Gmail app you can do that only by typing “label:unread” in the search field.

Con

Very limited HTML composing

Composing of HTML formatted mails is very limited. No inline images and only some basic text formatting options

Con

No intrinsic p2p encryption option

Con

Too heavy

It should be lightweight.

Con

Limited notification buttons

Alternative Products

Each month, over 2.8 million people use Slant to find the best products and share their knowledge. Pick the tags you’re passionate about to get a personalized feed and begin contributing your knowledge.